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SHORT STORY
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You know how when you close your eyes, the last thing you saw stays behind your eyelids for a moment before disappearing? For me, that image, the last thing I saw before total darkness, was the door to the storage closet closing shut with an eerie click. By my estimate, that was probably nine hours ago. By my bladder's estimate, it was "It's time to piss in the poinsettia" hours ago. I'm a good person, right? I take care of my parents. Never got into any serious trouble (smoking in my high school stairwell and stealing Little Debbies snack cakes from the corner store don't count). The first in my family to graduate college and open a business. I'd done well. So why was I stuck in the storage closet of said business?
Phones ringing were usually my favorite sound. It meant that customers were calling in. It meant money was coming in for me to do something I enjoyed -- decorating. And it was our busiest season. During Christmas people literally threw their wallets at us to make their homes look like Rockefeller Center. There were a lot of late nights. Last night being one of them. A last-minute booking came through and we took it. We were a lean team, but the four of us got things done. We'd decorated an entire two-story condo in SoHo in less than two hours -- only to come back and take it all down four hours later.
We didn't get back to our Brooklyn loft office space until almost midnight. I felt proud of my team but also guilty about the extra work that night and what lay ahead. We had the annual Dyker Heights house decorating contest the next day. It was supposed to be just a friendly competition amongst the neighbors of this quaint area of Brooklyn, but for us professional decorators, winning was huge. Winning meant more bookings for the rest of the year and so far I'd lost every year to my rival Tammy Townsend and her Girl About Town Decor team. She'd been doing this for years and always dusted all of us; but last year I'd come in second place and was sure this year will be my year.
So, I told my team to head on home, rest up, and I'd put everything away. In a haze of exhaustion, I forgot to prop open the crappy door to the storage closet. I was locked in with no way to reach anyone. My cellphone was tucked nicely in my jacket which was hanging on the chair at my desk. I listened to my phone ring until it didn't anymore. The missed calls now taunted me more than excited me. I was missing clients. I was missing money. I was missing a toilet.
